Dozens gathered near Sather Gate last Friday to attend a memorial organized by the Hong Kong Affairs Association of Berkeley and other community groups to mourn the lives lost in the Hong Kong Tai Po fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
White flowers and small candles were dispersed on the ground, a poster covered in colorful sticky notes demanding action was affixed onto Sather Gate and a sign was posted with one message: \u201cThis is an institutional failure, not an accident.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Nov. 26, a fire broke out in the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong. The fire spread across the complex\u2019s buildings, which were covered in netting and bamboo scaffolding due to an ongoing renovation project. Residents said some fire alarms did not sound.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite a tragedy what happened in Tai Po a week ago,\u201d said an organizer of the event, who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the Chinese government. \u201cWe feel that even overseas we have an obligation to spread awareness and to commemorate those lives lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
The memorial was predominantly led by a chaplain and consisted of a 159-second moment of silence \u2014 one second for each victim \u2014 an interfaith prayer and an opportunity for members of the community to express their thoughts and grief.<\/p>\n
Throughout the event, attendees were directed to a board containing information about the incident. The board claimed that the fire, which broke out Nov. 26, was a result of \u201cgross negligence.\u201d At least 21 people have been arrested for reasons involving the fire, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the board alleged that residents complained about these hazards to the Hong Kong Labour Department.<\/p>\n
Attendees were given QR codes to donate to victims and fliers listing four demands put forward by the Tai Po Fire Concern Group: support the affected residents, establish an independent investigative committee, reexamine supervision of construction and hold government officials responsible. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs international students, we feel pain watching how the news unfolded during Thanksgiving break,\u201d the organizer said. \u201c(The memorial) is something we thought we could do to support the community back home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens gathered near Sather Gate last Friday to attend a memorial organized by the Hong Kong Affairs Association…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[11718,48420,48423,143,145,144,30723,48421,48424,48422],"class_list":["post-86102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-affairs-association-of-berkeley","tag-hong-kong-labour-department","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sather-gate","tag-tai-po","tag-tai-po-fire-concern-group","tag-wang-fuk-court-complex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}